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In our emails, sent once or twice a week, you'll receive:
• alerts on new threats to North Carolina's environment
• opportunities to join other North Carolinians on urgent actions
• updates on the decisions that impact our environment
• resources to help you create a cleaner, greener future

Save the Blue Ridge Parkway

Lawmakers have removed a special budget provision that limited land acquisition along the parkway. That’s progress. But we’ve still got an uphill battle to restore the state’s proud legacy of preserving the Parkway and our natural heritage.

General Assembly guts key protections

The Blue Ridge Parkway brings millions of visitors to Mt. Mitchell, Looking Glass Falls and some of the country's most beautiful vistas. But in the last two years, the General Assembly has cut critical preservation funds in half, and questioned the future of the state’s largest conservation program—the Clean Water Fund.

At stake: breathtaking Parkway views

Driving the Blue Ridge Parkway feels like a trip through a national park, just what its creators intended 75 years ago. We have state conservation efforts partially to thank for the incredible views — since 1986, the state has preserved vulnerable land for future generations.

But this legacy is at risk: Two-thirds of the land that surrounds the Parkway is vulnerable to logging, poorly-planned development and other harms. With state preservation funds run nearly dry, priceless landscapes hang in the balance.

A legacy on hold

North Carolina has a long-standing history of preserving treasured landscapes for present and future generations to use and enjoy. In 2007 and 2008, your activism and our advocacy helped win unprecedented funding increases for preservation programs, which created Grandather Mountain State Park, Chimney Rock State Park and others.

When the General Assembly slashed preservation funds last year, they put that legacy on hold. Worse, they included a special provision in the budget to prevent the state from acquiring threatened land along the Parkway.

Together, we can save the Blue Ridge Parkway

Our staff knocked on doors across the state to educate Tar Heels about what's at stake and helped convince lawmakers to remove restrictions on land conservation.

With our partners, we’ve also conducted research, showing that we’ve already preserved more than 13,000 acres along the Parkway and other scenic byways, and need to preserve another 20,000 in the next five years.

But the real key to winning this fight is you. If enough of us speak out, we can restore our open space programs in the General Assembly and in Congress and put them to work protecting our stunning Blue Ridge scenery.

Preservation updates

Kill Devil Hills, NC –Three Outer Banks mayors joined business leaders and more than 600 community members at a public hearing Monday to voice their opposition to drilling off North Carolina’s coast The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), which is responsible for managing offshore energy development in federal waters, organized the hearing in Kill Devil Hills.

Wrightsville Beach, NC – Despite a winter storm, hundreds of North Carolinians attended a public hearing on Tuesday to voice their opposition to the Obama Administration’s plan to open up the entire North Carolina coast to offshore drilling. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), which is responsible for managing offshore energy development in federal waters, organized the hearing.

Asheville– As Congress deliberates on the federal budget, a new Environment North Carolina Research & Policy Center analysis, entitled Death by a Thousand Cuts, exposes the challenges facing the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Smokies and other national parks and forests as a result of mounting funding cuts to the National Park Service.

Our National Parks have been called America’s best idea, and represent the rugged and resilient spirit of our natural heritage. From our first encounter with wildlife, or first night sleeping under the stars, to our first time climbing to the precipice of some of the world’s tallest mountains, this country’s national parks, forests, wildlife refuges and waterways are where some of our most cherished memories are formed.